Tezos Foundation Adds Four New Members, Paving Way for Platform Launch

Tezos Foundation, the Zug, Switzerland-based nonprofit that governs the now $1 billion worth of assets for Tezos, a blockchain project that has yet to launch, just added to its board four new members: Olaf Carlson-Wee, Pascal Cléré, Marylene Micheloud and Hubertus Thonhauser. In addition to the two new members announced last week, this brings the total number of people sitting on the foundation board to seven.

“The four new board members bring a tremendous amount of experience and know-how into the foundation, both in terms of technology and leadership. I am looking forward to working closely with them to assist in the timely launch of the Tezos network,” said Ryan Jasperson, Tezos Foundation president, in a statement.

The Foundation now has reorganized completely with all three of the original members, including former president Johann Gevers, gone. It also strongly resembles T2, the seven-member rival foundation introduced by Jasperson last month in an effort to wrestle control away from Gevers, the previous president. Since October 2017, Gevers and Tezos founders Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, who control the Tezos proprietary code through a Delaware corporation, were locked in a bitter battle.

Among the new members of the Tezos Foundation is Carlson-Wee, the founder of Polychain Capital, a cryptocurrency hedge fund and early backer for the Tezos project, having purchased tokens well in advance of the ICO. Carlson-Wee offered to serve on the Tezos Foundation board in December 2017 but apparently was rejected by Gevers.

Micheloud, the only woman on the board, is a retired Swiss computer scientist; Cléré is an executive at Alstom Digital Mobility; and Thonhauser is a partner at a venture capital firm in Dubai.

The addition of the new members should help to clear a path for the long-awaited launch of the Tezos network, which will enable contributors to the project to redeem their “tezzies” tokens and begin trading, perhaps getting a return on some of the funds they put into the ICO, originally pitched as a “fundraiser.”

In its statement announcing the new members, the Foundation did not mention a timeline for the launch. Although, Kathleen Breitman may have hinted at a launch in the next few weeks, last week, she told The Wall Street Journal that Tezos does not have a launch date yet.

While the emergence of an all-new Tezos Foundation appears to indicate a win for the organizers of the Tezos project, the Breitmans have yet to make any official statements on the rapid change of events in the last week. The couple have also not said anything about whether they have reached a settlement over the large bonus that Gevers tried to claim for himself in September 2017. The project is still facing several class action lawsuits accusing them of selling securities. Although the Breitmans previously asked the foundation for help in covering the legal fees surrounding those lawsuits, the new foundation board members have not yet commented on what their policy will be in footing those bills.